Living Locatelli

There is a lot of fluff around food," says Giorgio Locatelli. "I come here and I'm treated like a rock star," he covers his mouth with his hand. "It's embarrassing. So every time I think, ‘Can I do something positive with this?'" He's between demos at the Cape Town Good Food & Wine Show, still in his chef's jacket and confined to the unforgiving glare of fluorescent light.

 

Our first impromptu conversation was at Nobu when I met off-duty Giorgio; a tall, happy figure dressed in black, with hair that's more salt-and-pepper than the PR pictures let on. His manners made the biggest impression. When I flung my belongings under the bar to tackle a piece of yellowtail-and-jalapeno sushi with some semblance of grace, he immediately rescued my coat from the floor and carefully arranged it on the back of a chair.

Smiling, he related an amusing airport encounter with Willie Harcourt-Cooze trying to convince customs that his cocoa granules packed in cylindrical tubes really are the same stuff you buy in slabs. "This chocolate almost got us into a lot of trouble!" Giorgio laughed. His less suspicious-looking cargo was Castelmagno cheese, from the vicinity of his hometown Corgeno. "Imagine a young man - that is Parmesan. Imagine an old man, his grandfather - that is Castelmagno," he said by way of description. "It is very dry and crumbly and you can taste the animal in the cheese. In the restaurant we serve it with a little honey because of the saltiness."

Naturally we got chatting about South African food. "Where can I try these South African meatballs?" he asked. "Frikkadels?" I ventured. "Yes!" he said. "You'll only really find them in people's homes," I replied. Giorgio shook his head. "You see, that's what I'm about, home cooking, that's what I should be eating!" And that's precisely when I missed the gap of offering to cook the man dinner. So I did the next best thing and took a basket of homemade frikkadels to the interview... We take our seats and Giorgio refuses the espresso he's offered. "No, we have to taste the frikkadels!"

I open the tin; his demeanour softens and his voice becomes gentle. "Aaah..." he says, "It looks just like polpette." In memory of Lannice Snyman I'd cooked her recipe. It seemed fitting that the late doyenne of SA cuisine inform Giorgio's first taste of what a frikkadel should be.

Giorgio puts on his black-framed glasses and spoons one onto a plate. "What is in the sauce? Are these aubergines?" he asks, leaning over the meatball in analysis. Very elegantly he breaks it open using a spoon and a fork. He tastes. "What is the sweetness?" he asks, turning to me. "Brown sugar," I reply, and thinking of koeksisters, fig preserve and Mrs Balls I continue, "South Africans have quite a sweet palate," a bit too defensively perhaps. "No, it's good," he concludes. "Yes, just like polpette."

That is the last time Giorgio pauses for consideration, for the rest of the interview his answers are delivered like a shot from a pistol. "I hate it when people ask what is the next big trend," he says on the subject of ‘molecular gastronomy' and nouvelle cuisine and how they fit into the greater culinary whole. "The trend has been the same for the last three million years: we need to eat three times a day or we'll die!" Has he been to El Bulli? Yes - in Gordon Ramsay's new silver Porsche. "I thought we were going to a restaurant in South London!"

And when I ask how someone so grounded in authenticity reconciles a presence on a manmade island in Dubai - a destination that's not exactly the poster-child for such values - Giorgio begins answering before I've even finished the question. "It was a sentimental decision." He says, "Sol Kerzner's son, Butch, would come into the restaurant [Locanda Locatelli] a lot, but he wouldn't say, ‘Oh, my father owns this and that.' He was a very cool guy and we became friends. He flew me to Dubai in his private jet and there was this boat vomiting sand into the water. I thought he was nuts and that it would never happen. So when he asked me to do a restaurant I said, ‘Yes, yes, of course, we'll do it.'"

After Butch's tragic death, Sol approached Giorgio to follow through on Butch's wishes for Ronda Locatelli at Atlantis The Palm Hotel. "Sometimes it's crippling for the ingredients," admits Giorgio, "but then we didn't do a restaurant based on fresh ingredients.

Why is Parmesan round? So it can be rolled. There are best-quality tomatoes in tins. Italian food is made to travel." Although it began with a fond SA connection, it's now the new recruits in the kitchen - often from backgrounds with few prospects but desperate to learn - who make it meaningful. "It's about taking my philosophy to a new audience," he says. "Not the diners, but the staff."

On wine Giorgio places his trust in his sommelier, Virgilio Gennaro, who was ranked in the top three of the 2009 Best Sommelier in Europe contest. But on asking Giorgio which wine is closest to his heart, he answers without hesitation, "Red wine, from Piedmont." In his cookery demonstration, Barolo played the lead in a risotto. His signature is to nestle a warm spoon holding some of the wine on top of the risotto. The aromas of the wine are released - violets, roses, tar, leather - and then the spoon is tilted and it trickles through the rice where the flavour notes of wild cherry and tobacco mingle with a backdrop of the same but deepened through cooking.

Giorgio uses Viola Nano rice, toasting it to give structure, and he reduces the wine right down to cook off the alcohol. While it cooked I kept an eye on my watch; the risotto took 17 minutes on the nose, just as he says it should. Barolo, referred to as ‘King of wines and wine of kings', is from north-west Italy, where Giorgio's roots lie and where a cuisine of prosperity is founded on rice, butter and cheese. He explains that because the Barolo, which builds the risotto's base of flavour, and the Castelmagno, which finishes it, both come from Piedmont, he has a particular attachment to the recipe. "A recipe is not just a list of ingredients and instructions," he adds. "A recipe is something you must feel you hold, something you are a part of."

"Every time I look at a dish I always think, ‘What can I take away?'" he says of his personal recipe-writing process. "And that comes from my grandmother, except when she did it she was probably thinking, ‘How can I make the rosemary last longer?'"

His grandmother's formative role is apparent right from Made In Italy's opening page. "In my grandparents' generation it was all about saving what you have. My grandfather wouldn't throw anything away, even an elastic band - I remember I was only 14 and I would feel like it was such a betrayal if I ever did. My grandfather had one suit, it was beautiful, but he had one suit! Everything was appreciated. If everyone was like that it would make a much better world. Today it is all about more, more, more."

So why doesn't he check out of modern life, buy a piece of land and go back to living the old way? He answers, again without hesitation, "Because you need to do what you're good at and then you can help people every day. I had no choice. I was in the kitchen from a young age. What good am I as a farmer?"

Giorgio is a chef who has always had a presence in my kitchen rather than on the coffee table. When we met there were two jars of Giorgiorecipe basil pesto (from the last summer-garden harvest) sitting in my fridge. And it's thanks to him that I understand how to make a decent risotto. In the queue to his demo I overheard an unlikely audience member say to his mate, "Bru, this guy is the business!" Maybe it's because he's as honest as the food he cooks, but I suspect the difference Giorgio makes is far greater than he might realise.

For more information on Giorgo and Locanda Locatelli go to www.locandalocatelli.com.